Now Complete! Severus Snape is not a kind man, but Hermione Granger is past caring. She wants his approval and will do anything to get it. How far will she go? Even she has no concept of the depths to which she will fall in her quest.

The
basement kitchen at Grimmauld Place was dark in the way only a
windowless, underground room in the dark of night can be: absolutely.
The silence was total, as well, save for her own breathing, but
Hermione scarcely counted that. It might be quiet now, but she was
sure she had heard a sound—that it had woken her from her sleep—and
she had come downstairs to investigate. The boys were at the Burrow,
the Order were out and about their business, and on this night only
Hermione and Arabella Figg occupied the Black house, its rooms chilly
even in August. Tomorrow, Hermione would journey on to Ottery St
Catchpole; tomorrow, Arabella Figg would return to Little Whinging.
But for tonight, they were two women alone in the great old house,
and Hermione was quite sure she had heard a noise in the
cellar.

Standing in the doorway, Hermione held her breath and
listened. It might be nothing more than Crookshanks chasing a mouse
or Kreacher lurking beneath his dresser in the boiler room—but
Hermione did not care to leave it to chance. The war was on, this
summer after her sixth year at school; Lord Voldemort's Death
Eaters were abroad, even in daylight, wreaking havoc—they would
certainly not hesitate to invade the headquarters of the Order of the
Phoenix if they could manage it.

But she heard nothing, save
the pounding of her heart in her ears.

She slipped her fingers
up her sleeve, meaning to draw her wand and light the gas lamp—but
she was suddenly and inexplicably pressed to the wall. The
unmistakeable tip of a wand thrust roughly beneath her chin, forcing
her head back, even as a large body trapped her against the wall and
a gloved hand covered her mouth. Instinctively, Hermione raised her
knee sharply, seeking to disable her captor, and she continued to
scrabble for her wand.

'Fuck,' an angry voice grated, and
the body twisted against her, a sharp hip slamming against her,
knocking her head against the wall as a brutal grip about her wrist
foiled her attempts to reach her wand. 'Be still!'

Her
head hurt; she knew she would have a goose egg beneath her hair.
Still, she parted her lips and bit the palm of the hand over her
mouth as hard as she could.

'Bloody fucking hell!' the
voice swore, and her wand was ripped from her sleeve. She heard it
strike the wall across the room as she was pushed to the floor on her
face with a heavy body straddling her.

Hermione bucked
against the weight, trying desperately to dislodge her attacker.
Suddenly, light flooded the kitchen, and she blinked against the
unexpected illumination.

'Granger! I might have known!'

The
weight was then gone from her back, and Hermione launched herself up
and away, desperately looking about for her wand.

'Are you
looking for this?'

She turned wildly, ready to fight, to
bite and claw, if necessary—but it was only Professor Snape, her
Potions teacher, standing beyond her reach, his wand held at his
side, pointing at the floor, whilst her own vine wood wand dangled
from the fingertips of his other hand.

'P-professor!' she
gasped.

'Take it, stupid girl!' he spat at her, and
Hermione scurried forward to retrieve her wand from him.

'But
sir—what are you doing here?' she asked. Snape wasn't supposed
to be in town—she had heard Mundungus Fletcher whisper as much to
Mrs Figg the night before. He was spending the summer with …

Snape
tucked his wand away and peeled the glove from his injured hand,
revealing the clear indentation of her teeth marks across the palm of
his hand.

'Oh, sir!' she cried, grasping the injured hand
to look it over more carefully. 'I'm so sorry, but you ought not
to have been skulking about in the dark!'

Snape snatched his
hand from her with a hiss, whether of pain or disgust she could not
tell. 'Go to your room!' he snapped at her, turning away and
moving to the counter, snatching open the door of the cupboard above
it.

'If you're looking for first aid supplies, they aren't
kept there anymore,' she said. 'I rearranged in here.'

'I
suppose you also rearranged
the location of the fucking gas lamp,' he snarled, slamming the
cupboard door closed and wrenching open the one next to it.

'Yes,
I did move it,' she admitted. 'Of course, I had no way of knowing
you would be back from Volde—'

He spun where he stood, his
face twisted into a mad, nearly inhuman mask of fury and hatred.
'Shut up!' he thundered at her. 'Do not
speak his name!'

The injured hand was no longer nursed to
his chest but now clutched his left forearm, where Hermione knew the
Dark Mark was burnt into his flesh. Dimly, she wondered if it hurt
him when someone spoke Voldemort's name aloud. Disregarding his
peremptory commands, she walked past him to the dresser, and opening
the bottom drawer, she withdrew a box of first aid supplies.

'If
you will sit, sir, I will clean your wound,' she said, moving to
the kitchen table and placing the box upon it.

'If you will
get the hell out, I will attend to it myself,' he replied without
looking at her.

Hermione watched him, standing across from her
with his face averted, his attention on his bitten hand. His greasy
black hair hung about his face, obscuring it. He wore a black
travelling cloak, still fastened over his clothing, and she could see
his customary black trousers over his black boots. He looked as if he
had come a long way.

'Please, sir,' she coaxed, as she
might with one of her recalcitrant male friends. 'Let me help
you.'

His black eyes were then upon her, burning with
dislike and disdain, and she quailed, stepping back from him as if
struck. 'You have helped
me quite enough for one day, idiot girl!' he hissed. 'Get out!
Don't I have to put up with you enough during term time? I ought
not to be troubled with you now! Out!'

Hermione swallowed
her fear, watching as he staggered over and collapsed into one of the
chairs. He seemed truly unwell—he ought to permit her to …

He
jerked the box toward him, ignoring her as if she were not present in
the room. He murmured a cleansing spell over the bite, then withdrew
a bottle of the essence of dittany, spelling the cork from the
bottle. She approached slowing and quietly, as if attempting not to
frighten a tiger in the wild. His face was bent over his arm, and she
saw the concentration he focussed on the task, as he looked when
marking essays at his desk in the dungeon Potions classroom. She had
covertly watched him at it more than once, wondering what she would
have to do to earn his approval …

'Granger.'

She
froze, and he looked up from his task, his empty black eyes boring
into hers.

'Granger, get
out.
I neither need nor desire your assistance, much less your company.'
He spoke the last word as if it were meant as an affront.

'You
needn't be insulting!' she cried indignantly. 'I only want to
help!'

'Yet I have repeatedly spurned your offers of help,
have I not?' he inquired softly, menacingly, turning his eyes from
her dismissively.

'But I …' she began, only to have him
cut across her yet again.

'Using your pure-white hands to
administer first aid to the injury you
gave me will not increase my regard for you,' he said cuttingly. 'I
am not
impressed with you, stupid girl, and I am never
likely to change.' He completed the application and dittany and
began to bind the hand with white gauze. 'Go.
Away.'

He
was distraught—he must be hungry and tired—he couldn't possibly
really mean
what he was saying to her. She took another step towards him. 'I
could fix something for you to eat,' she said in her coaxing tone.
'I could make sure the bed in your room is made up …'

With
a non-verbal spell, he sent the box of first aid supplies floating to
the dresser, where the drawer opened to receive them, then closed
gently and finally.

'Do you know what your problem is,
Granger?' he inquired, removing a flask from the pocket of his
cloak and taking a long pull from its contents. 'Your problem is
that you think you know better than me, even as I am explicitly
telling you what I want for you to do.'

Hermione
stopped within an arm's reach of him, her brow furrowed in thought.
'You're implying that I don't listen
to you!' she accused.

'It's not an implication,' he
replied. 'You don't listen to anyone.
Only Hermione Granger knows what is best to do in any situation, big
or small.' He sneered at her. 'Arrogant, headstrong, and
foolhardy—the symbol of your House, as it were.' And he tipped
the flask to his lips, the spirits he consumed burning her eyes with
the strength of their vapours.

'No one—no teacher—has
ever said that about me!' she objected hotly.

His thin,
cruel lips curved into an unpleasant smile. 'None of your other
teachers see you for what you really are,' he said silkily.
'Mundane, pedestrian—nothing but a memorising, word-spouting
popinjay with no real talent and less character.' His voice dropped
even further, and his insolent eyes raked her from head to toe. 'I
see
you, Granger. You'll never fool me.'

Instinctively,
Hermione crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly mindful of her
nightdress and her loosely belted dressing gown. His bark of laughter
startled her, and when he stood from the table, she fell back a
step.

She
burned beneath the scourge of his brutal disdain. 'I'm not
without talent!' she cried, near tears.

His merciless black
gaze burned through her. 'Would you like to have the opportunity to
prove it?' he asked dangerously.

Hermione swallowed, feeling
her heart fluttering in her chest like a hummingbird at an orchid.
What would he ask her to do? Solve a logic puzzle, like the one he
had written to protect the Philosopher's Stone? Recite a one of the
Laws of Magic? Brew a complex potion?

He crossed his arms over
his chest as he waited for her response, and she noted the breadth of
his shoulders over his slim hips, his lithe grace proclaimed by his
very posture. He had looked her over with a sneer on his face, but
she was a young woman, and he was a … a man.
Perhaps he would ask some other sort of proof altogether …

'Well?'
he demanded. 'It's not as if you could succeed at what I will
ask.'

She took an impetuous step towards him. 'I can! I
will!'

He
stepped forward and his thin, pitiless fingers dug into her
shoulders. 'Then do
not move,'
he said. 'Stand here, in exactly this attitude, until I tell you to
move. Show that you are capable of understanding and following
instructions.'

She opened her lips to object. Stand in the
cold, dark kitchen all night? In her nightdress? What did that have
to do with proving her talents?

'And do it silently,'
he added, as if tightening a noose about her neck.

Hermione
slowly closed her mouth, looking up into his thin, sallow face,
wondering how it had come about that she had left her warm, welcoming
bed to creep down into the basement in the dead of night and be
challenged by the most provoking man she knew to remain here all
night. His fingers were unkind as they dug into the flesh of her
shoulders; his hair was oily, stringy, and unclean as it hung about
his disagreeable face; and his crooked, yellow teeth were horrid to
this daughter of dentists, even as he bared them at her. Why in the
world would she care what he thought?

'Blink once for
"yes",' he told her, his Firewhisky scented breath hot on her
face.

And she did.

He
extinguished the gas lamp before striding out without another glance
as her, and she could hear his repeated snorts of laughter until he
climbed so far up into the house that distance alone hid his
amusement from her. She stood where he had left her, determination
holding her rigidly in place. Why hadn't she thought to visit the
loo before coming down here? Well, she wouldn't think
about needing a pee. Going to the bathroom would invalidate her
response to his challenge, and she was determined not to do that.
This was her chance to impress him—to prove something to him—and
she would take
that opportunity and use
it. Every teacher she had ever had, magical or Muggle, had praised
Hermione Granger for her work, her attitude, and her acumen. Who was
Severus Snape to deny her what was her due?

He
doesn't think it's your due,
the critic in her mind pointed out. He
thinks you're nothing but a sycophant and a memoriser of facts,
with no true understanding of application—he thinks you're
mundane and pedestrian.

Mundane!
That was the epithet Professor Trelawney had used for her. She would
prove him wrong!

Her bladder ached.

She would prove him
wrong, no matter what it took.

Standing where he had left her,
with one foot slightly in front of the other, she began to recite in
her mind the twelve uses of dragon blood.

She
held out for three hours before her bladder would hold no more, and
she cringed with shame and mortification as the hot, acrid liquid
first trickled, then flowed down her legs, wetting her clothing,
soaking her socks, and creating a puddle upon the kitchen floor.

She
was dozing on her feet when he swept into the kitchen the next
morning, freshly showered and shaved, his still damp hair combed
straight back from his forehead. She fluttered to awareness,
desperate to turn away from him in her humiliation but equally
desperate to stand her ground until he spoke words of approval.

'Oh
my,' he said, staring at the spot she had occupied for the last
interminable hours, seeming to relish the puddle of urine there. 'I
didn't think you would actually do
it, Miss Granger—did you honestly think I cared whether or not you
stood here all night?' He sneered at her. 'You had best go wash,
hadn't you? I've been in public loos that smelt better.'

And
without another word he swept out of the room and out of the house,
leaving her standing in her degradation and rage. It was not until
she heard the front door slam behind him that she moved from the
spot, her feet squelching disgustingly in her urine-soaked socks with
every step she took.

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